Oxbridge Avalanche

I was going to write this intro about CJ doing the Jackal, a famous scene from the West Wing.

But I have seen a load of tweets about the fact that Oxford and Cambridge are allowed to enter multiple colleges on Uni Challenge, so I've changed my mind.

CJ will be doing the Jackal next week, though. Never fear.

Multi College Entries

To replace The Jackal, I am going to recycle a post I wrote on the subject in 2016.

I am doing this because:

• We are in the midst of a climate crisis and any kind of reuse helps out. Think of the energy it would take to generate an entirely new post.
• It slaps, and says pretty much everything I would say now, but if anyone complains about it I can say that they were the words of a snot-nosed 20 year old who didn't know what they were doing.
  
  Giving me some sort of diplomatic immunity.

Anyway, this originally formed part of the intro for a post about the first round match between Wadham, Oxford and Robinson, Cambridge in 2016.

Let me know in the comments if you disagree (or agree) with any of it.

Intro to Wadham vs Robinson

August 2016

I consider myself to have a reasonable grasp of how to use Google in the mission of finding answers to tricky questions, but I have thus far failed to find a satisfactory reason as to why Oxford and Cambridge Universities were ever allowed to enter multiple teams in the first place.

Durham also has a collegiate system, for example, but they get just the one team, which flatly debunks the only logical point ever put forward. The reason generally given is that each of the colleges are distinct entities, because tutorials for each college are held separately from the rest.

But that, frankly, is a nonsense non-explanation. Lectures for each course are attended by students from all of the colleges. This is the same as for all Universities and all courses at all other Universities are then split down into tutorial groups too.

The only difference is that outside Oxbridge you don’t live with your tutorial groups or under any kind of collegiate label. Another reason given, I think entirely seriously, was that each college has its own individual library…

The Manchester team of 1975 famously protested the bias by answering every question with either ‘Trotsky’, ‘Lenin’ or ‘Marx’, which, while in its own precious way was quite noble, surely must have been a most dreary half hour of viewing.

This achieved nothing, as evidenced by the eleven Oxbridge entities competing in this years series. Perhaps a better protest would have been to, like their recent counterparts, win the series.

I think the main reason that this is still the situation nowadays is the classic ‘its-always-been-this-way-so-why-would-you-change-it’ argument, rather than anything that actually makes logical sense.

So why, in this enlightened era when even the most corrupt of organisations in FIFA have been persuaded to initiate goal line technology has nothing been done to change this? 

The explanation most commonly given is that were the two Universities to field a singular team they would both produce invincible monsters, and sweep aside all comers in what would surely become the most boringly predictable of spectacles.

Splitting them into colleges makes the competition fairer to the other, less prestigious institutions, who would undoubtedly stand no chance against either Oxbridge ‘Superteam’.

This argument though, falls short on all counts. Oxbridge Universities may have won 54.5% of the 22 series since Jeremy Paxman became presenter, but when you consider that they have comprised 39.3% of all competitors that statistic doesn’t seem so impressive.

If you let Novak Djokovic enter both himself and forty nine clones into Grand Slams (39.3% of 128) then he would have won more than the twelve he already has, and that would then have prevented less high-profile players (or Universities) from taking part.

Manchester University, meanwhile, have won 18.2% of these series with only 2.5% of the entrants, though that comparison is probably a tad facetious.

As stated at the start of this post, this series features three Oxbridge matches in the first round alone, which guarantees them three teams in the second round (including one Cambridge team specifically, given the Cam-Cam match in week four) and eight chances in total for a team to make that stage.

All other entrants only have one chance, so part of their success has to be attributed to the advantage they both already have before a question has even been asked.

2024 Retrospective

Reading this back, I can quickly pick holes in the Djokovic analogy. If it were to be a fair comparison then the 49 Djokovices (Djokovici?) would need to be lesser than the one true Djokovic, making it unikely they would outperform the expected number of grand slams.

But in general, I think it mostly stands up. There aren't really any good reasons as to why there are multiple Oxbridge teams other than 'that's the way its always been done'.

Nothing logical, at least.

And the 'Superteam' argument can be more readily disputed nowadays, given that non-Oxbridge universities have won each of the last six series, with no Oxbridge teams making the final in the past three years.

Other unis have developed stronger quiz scenes, taking away some of the Oxbridge advantage.

Maybe they are in need of a superteam in order to compete with the new wave of quizzing behemoths.

Pre-Match Analysis

Anyway - let's get on with this episode, which was between Exeter and Christ's.

Exeter made the quarter-finals in 1997, but haven't been on since 2009, which is the only year in which both Exeter and Exeter, Oxford appeared on the show.

Christ's made the semi-finals in their first appearance of the BBC era in 2002, narrowly losing to eventual winners Somerville, and haven't made it that far in five subsequent attempts. They were also runners-up to another Cambridge college, Churchill, in 1970.

Here's your first starter for ten.

Christ's, Bethlehem gets us off to a good start with Clara Schumann. I had my most viral tweet of all time yesterday, pointing out how fantastic a combination of college and contestant this is.

Christ's, Bethlehem.

I wonder if he chose the college because of the potential for amusing situations like this.

When I was at uni, I picked my halls based on the fact I shared a name with one of them, and that brought plenty of mild hilarity, so I can only imagine the sheer ecstatic joy brought on by anyone at Cambridge discovering that Bethlehem goes to Christ's.

They take a hat-trick on pairs of kings (three (times two) wise men), with Bethlehem displaying some impeccable recall.

Do Not Despard

His captain Despard, who looks like he's time travelled from the 80s, takes the next starter with cilia, but they struggle with a bonus set on German cinema.

Another for Despard puts Christ's 55-points clear, before Gray takes a picture starter to get Exeter off the mark. They are denied a bonus because they use a verb in the present tense rather than the perfect, which seems needlessly persnickety. I get that the meaning is subtly different, but come on.

Bethlehem loses 5-points with an incorrect buzz, but makes up for it immediately with Doctor of the Church on the following starter.

Vemuri hits back for Exeter with interpreter, but they can't build any momentum and Despard takes another with the Pritzker prize. A fourth for the Christ's captain puts them 60-points to the good, before Gray - the multimedia star of the episode - takes the music starter to keep Exeter in it.

O Little Town

The Klein bottle gives him a third starter, but Bethlehem once again stops Exeter in their tracks with Croatia.

The fantastically named (indeed, in an episode which didn't feature Christ's, Bethlehem he may have got more screentime in this blog) Schuyler Colfax brings Exeter to within 20-points, but the last five or so minutes of this game belong to Bethlehem, and he notches up another four starters to end the game with seven.

Exeter 110 - 205 Christ's

Christ's join Wadham and Oriel, Oxford and Darwin, Cambridge in the second round. They can be joined at most by one more Oxbridge college - St Edmund Hall, Oxford, who face SOAS in the final first round match up.

Could this be the year the Oxbridge drought is ended?

Join me next week as St Andrews take on Cardiff.

In the meantime I'll be thinking of Bethlehem references for Christ's second round appearance.